“Don’t you think, Stephen, that a person in your precarious position ought to be civil to my relatives?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Failing. I meant to be civil. I only hadn’t—anything to say.”
She a laughed. “Are you a dear boy? I sometimes wonder; or are you a brute?”
Again he had nothing to say. Then she laughed more mischievously, and said—
“How can you be either, when you are a philosopher? Would you mind telling me—I am so anxious to learn—what happens to people when they die?”
“Don’t ask ME.” He knew by bitter experience that she was making fun of him.
“Oh, but I do ask you. Those paper books of yours are so up-to-date. For instance, what has happened to the child you say was killed on the line?”
The rain increased. The drops pattered hard on the leaves, and outside the corridor men and women were struggling, however stupidly, with the facts of life. Inside it they wrangled. She teased the boy, and laughed at his theories, and proved that no man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. Suddenly she stopped, not through any skill of his, but because she had remembered some words of Bacon: “The true atheist is he whose hands are cauterized by holy things.” She thought of her distant youth. The world was not so humorous then, but it had been more important. For a moment she respected her companion, and determined to vex him no more.
They left the shelter of the laurels, crossed the broad drive, and were inside the house at last. She had got quite wet, for the weather would not let her play the simple life with impunity. As for him, he seemed a piece of the wet.
“Look here,” she cried, as he hurried up to his attic, “don’t shave!”